{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\cocoartf1404\cocoasubrtf340{\fonttbl\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 Helvetica;}{\colortbl;\red255\green255\blue255;}\pard\tx560\tx1120\tx1680\tx2240\tx2800\tx3360\tx3920\tx4480\tx5040\tx5600\tx6160\tx6720\pardirnatural\f0\fs24 \cf0 CbDThe Captain - Part 1 \par \par Judith Lloyd of Llanteg History Society tells us the fascinating story of Carmarthenshire born Captain Lloyd Rice Philipps who spent considerable time serving in the British army in India:C/bD \par In 1948 at Llanteg in east Pembrokeshire there died an elderly lady whom many of the older villagers will still remember. She was Georgiana Philipps of Oaklands - known to all as Miss Georgie - and although infirmity and near blindness slowed her down towards the end of her long life (she died just a few weeks short of her 90th birthday) she had played an active role in the village throughout the 60-odd years in which she had lived here. \par Friends and acquaintances knew that she had been born out in India. But what they did not know, perhaps, was that this old lady was the last surviving link in Llanteg with one of the most distinguished families in the area, that her grandfather had been Mayor of Carmarthen and deputy Lord Lieutenant of Carmarthenshire, and that her younger brother was one of Dr Livingstone's brave young missionaries in Africa. \par Of all the family, however, it was Miss Georgie's father who was probably the most intriguing member. Llanteg has known some interesting characters over the years but few more complex and fascinating than Captain Lloyd Rice Philipps. His story reads like a Boy's Own adventure, packed throughout with colourful drama and exotic locations - plus a moral twist at the end of the tale. \par Lloyd Philipps came into the world with a silver spoon in his mouth. His family were the Philippses of Abergwili, who for generations past had intermarried with the landed gentry of both Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire and could trace their ancestry back to the 11th century. He was born on 23rd February 1827 at the family house at Cwmgwili, the sixth son of Captain John George Philipps RN and his wife Frances Eliza. Theirs was a large family, and their children healthy for the period, because of the seven boys and four girls born to them between 1817 and 1831, only two died in infancy. (Captain John George Philipps himself seems to have enjoyed robust good health: in the course of a long and eventful life as a naval officer he had fought under Nelson at the Battle of the Nile, and had seen service in Italy, Egypt and Spain as well as the North Americas and the Baltic.) \par As was then the custom, Lloyd Philipps was baptised soon after birth, at Abergwili Church on 5th March 1827. We must suppose that he had the usual upbringing of a gentleman's son and was educated with his siblings at home by a governess or private tutor, before being sent away to boarding school. From his entrance examination for military service in the East India Company, which he sat in 1845 when he was eighteen, we learn that he had received an education in classical studies at the Revd C.Walkey's school at Lucton, just outside Leominster in Herefordshire. \par At the end of that same year of 1845 a document addressed from East India House in London, dated 10th December, states: \par CiD'I, Major General Robertson, being one of the Directors of the East India Company, beg leave to present the petitioner, Lloyd Rice Philipps, as a cadet for the Madras Infantry as one of my Nominations of the Season provided he shall appear to you eligible for that station; and I do declare, that from the character given of him by David Morris Esq who certifies that he is well acquainted with his family, character and connexions, he is, in my opinion, a fit person to petition the East India Company for the appointment he now solicits'.C/iD \par (David Morris served as Member of Parliament for Carmarthen from 1837 to 1864.)Thus, with an excellent character reference and much promise for his future, Cadet Philipps - now promoted to Ensign - embarked on the long sea voyage to India. On 15th June 1846 he was posted to the 36th Madras Native Infantry and took up his appointment at the military garrison of Fort St George at Chennai, on the outskirts of Madras. \par It is impossible to imagine the emotions this young man of 19 must have experienced upon his arrival in India. There could have been no greater contrast between the sedate parochialism of Carmarthen and the vibrant, noisy, life of an Indian city with its alien sights and smells, its teeming streets and relentless stifling heat. The commissioned officers of Ensign Philipps's regiment would have been European, as would the majority of the non-commissioned officers, but the ranks were comprised solely of sepoys, Indian soldiers in the service of the British. The officers' families lived in a cantonment, which in India was a permanent military or civil settlement generally situated a few miles outside a native Indian town. Unmarried officers had their own quarters at the garrison. \par Lloyd Philipps's service record has been expunged, so we know nothing of his duties with his regiment at Fort St George, but it was a period during which he would obviously have become thoroughly acclimatized to life in the sub-continent. He must also have formed close friendships among his fellow officers, both on and off duty, but we can only guess that their recreational pursuits included hunting, drinking, and occasional gambling. \par At the end of February 1848 he successfully passed an examination in 'Hindoostanee', and a few months later was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. After there is a long gap until the fateful year of 1857 - the year of the Indian Mutiny. \par The Mutiny - which would result in the governing power of the East India Company passing to the British Crown - began as a revolt by the sepoys of the Bengal regiments, and spread rapidly throughout the northern Indian states. Although there was sporadic unrest elsewhere in the country, Madras, far to the south, escaped the terrible atrocities and massacres which took place in northern cities such as Delhi and Lucknow. In any case, Lt Lloyd Philipps was thousands of miles from any danger, home on furlough (leave of absence from his regiment) in Wales, so he probably saw very little of the action. \par It was during this leave that he married, on 4th August 1857, a lady named Maria Ann Tardrew, the ceremony taking place by special licence at St. Andrew's Church, Holborn, London. We know that the bride had been born in the parish of St Peter's, Carmarthen, just four months before Lt Philipps's own birthdate, making them both 30 years old at the time of their wedding, and we know that the Tardrews were a Carmarthen family, because the bride's parents, Thomas and Maria Tardrew, had been married there in 1825. So it seems highly probable that the young couple already knew each other through family acquaintance and had carried on their courtship by correspondence, as was often done in such cases. \par \par The new Mrs Philipps accompanied her husband on the arduous voyage back to India to begin domestic life in married quarters at Kurnool, Mangalore, a city directly west of Madras on the Malabar Coast, to where Lt Philipps's regiment had been posted. Here on 27th June 1858 their first child was born, Georgiana Maria, who was to grow up to become 'Miss Georgie' of Oaklands in distant Llanteg. Two more little girls soon followed: Ellen Fanny Rose, born 10 February 1860, and Elizabeth Emma, born 22 June 1861, who died just before her first birthday - though it was not long before the empty cradle held a new occupant, the Philippses' first son, Herbert Vaughan, born 7 August 1862. \par To all appearances the family's happiness seemed complete. But there was a serpent in their Eden, and we can only hazard a guess what form it took. Captain Philipps (he had been promoted in November 1858) was starting to get heavily into debt. The most likely explanation was that he had an addiction to gambling which he had found impossible to curb, resulting in financial embarrassment so serious that it drove him to commit an act of the most stupendous folly. \par The facts speak for themselves. At a General Court Martial held at the military cantonment of Kamptee, Madras, on the first day of August 1864, Capt Philipps was arraigned on the following charge: \par CiD'For having behaved in a scandalous manner, unbecoming the character of an Officer and a Gentleman, in the following instances. \par CbDFirst InstanceC/bD - In having at Kurnool, between the 19th March and the 3rd November 1863, with intent to commit fraud, forged a document purporting to be a Bill of Exchange drawn by one John Barker, Attorney at Law, on Sir John Lubback, Baronet, to pay to him the said Captain Lloyd Rice Philipps, on demand the sum of \'a3950 sterling, dated "London 19th March 1863" and purporting to be signed as accepted by "John Lubback, Bart., Banker" under the date "London, 20th March 1863". \par CbDSecond InstanceC/bD - In having between the 1st and 5th November 1863, fraudulently used as genuine the aforesaid document, by delivering and endorsing it over to one Gholam Mohideen Khan Janozee, in payment of a debt, well knowing it to be a forged document with intent to defraud the said Gholam Mohideen Khan Janozee.'(Editor's note: at present-day worth, the forged banknote which Capt Philipps was accused of trying to pass had a value of just over \'a350,000.) \par The arraignment continues: \par 'Finding - The Court on the evidence before it, and what has been stated in defence, is of the opinion that the Prisoner, Captain Lloyd Rice Philipps, of the 36th Regiment of Native Infantry, is \par "Guilty" of the charge in its First Instance \par "Guilty" of the charge in its Second Instance \par "Guilty" of the preamble of the charge. \par Sentence - The Court sentences the prisoner, Captain Lloyd Rice Philipps, of the 36th Regiment of Native Infantry, to be Cashiered. \par Kamptee, 23rd day of August 1864 \par Approved and Confirmed \par (signed) J.Hope Grant, Lieut. General \par Commander in Chief.'C/iD \par As a result of the court martial verdict, Capt Philipps was not only struck off the strength of the Army, but his military career was expunged from the service records, and he lost his entitlement to an Army pension. And as if that were not enough, to underline the awful tragedy of the situation Mrs Maria Philipps gave birth to a fourth baby girl, Catherine Charlotte, on 3rd November 1864, exactly three weeks after her husband had been cashiered. \par One wonders how often the wretched father must have pondered his family's motto 'Gwell Angau na Chywilydd' - 'Better Death than Shame'.We know that the new baby was baptised in Madras at the beginning of December that year. After that there is nothing more heard of the family until 1866, by which time they had left India and come back home to Abergwili, where, on 26th October, yet another child, Augusta Louisa, was baptised. \par After that there is a further gap of two years, and then in 1868 we find the Philippses have left Abergwili to live at Manchester House in Tavernspite. It seems probable that they found this accommodation through a family connection: Manchester House had originated as a public alehouse called The Spite (it later became the village shop) built by Thomas Philipps of Lampeter House, who owned Upper Carvan. And Tavernspite was far enough away from Carmarthen to discourage unwelcome speculation into the Captain's premature retirement from military service. \par Here in this little village the Philippses' last child was born on 17th January 1868 and christened John George, after the Captain's father.The census of 1871 shows the family still at Manchester House. Lloyd Philipps, now aged 44, describes himself as an annuitant, i.e., living on an annual allowance - perhaps one provided by his Abergwili relatives. His wife Maria is also 44, and their children are given as Herbert, aged 8, Catherine, 6, Augusta, 4, and John, 3. The two older children, Georgiana and Ellen, are absent from this census, either because they were staying with relatives, or because they were being educated elsewhere. \par \par Sometime towards the end of the 1870s the family left Tavernspite to move to Oaklands in the parish of Crunwere, where Capt Philipps's elder sister, Mrs Georgiana Morgan, was already living, at Heatherland, with her two daughters Catherina and Emma. Mrs Morgan was the widow of the Revd. Richard Morgan, whose family farmed Trenewydd, of which Oaklands was at that time a tenant farm, so it seems highly feasible that Mrs Morgan played some part in this removal. \par Interestingly, there seems to have been an earlier connection with the parish: in 1851 Capt Philipps's parents in Carmarthen had been employing a 19 year-old housemaid named Mary Palmer, born in Crunwere. She may well have been the same Mary Palmer living at Three Wells ten years earlier, aged nine. \par On the 1881 census Capt Philipps is described as a farmer of some 50 acres, living at Oaklands with his wife Maria, his first-born daughter Georgiana, now aged 22, and his last-born son, John, aged 13 and still at school. \par Little more is known about his remaining years. The shame of his court martial, and the damage that it did his family, clearly had had a profound effect upon his moral character, because his gravestone in the parish churchyard tells us that for the last 20 years of his life he was Rector's Warden at Crunwere Church. \par By 1891, when he was 64, the Captain seems to have retired from farming at Oaklands: that year's census describes him as living on his own means. His wife Maria was still alive, and young John, at 23, had become a student of theology. The elder son, Herbert, was now living at Heatherland with his aunt Georgiana Morgan, working as steward, managing the domestic concerns of the Heatherland household. (Herbert was to marry his cousin, Catherina Sarah Morgan, who was 11 years his senior. Their union, however, was tragically short-lived, because Catherina died in November 1903, and Herbert later became curate in charge of the little parish of Crickadarn, just north of Brecon. The two lie buried together in the same grave in Crunwere churchyard.) \par The summer of 1892 brought renewed sadness to the family with the death of the youngest daughter, Augusta Louisa. A tablet on the south wall of the nave in Crunwere Church reads: \par CiD'In Loving Memory of Augusta Louisa, youngest and dearly loved daughter of Lloyd and Maria Philipps, Oakland, in this Parish, who died the 31 July, 1892, aged 25 years. Thy will be done.'C/iD \par The eldest daughter, Miss Georgie, never married; and as the old century gave way to the new, she alone of the family remained at Oaklands to care for her ageing parents. There was fresh heartbreak in March 1906 when news came from Africa of the death of the younger son, John George, who had succumbed to fever while serving as a missionary in Nyasaland. And then two years later, on 15th April 1908, Mrs Maria Philipps - surely the most patient and long-suffering of wives - herself died, at the age of 82, and was buried in Crunwere churchyard. \par Perhaps it tells us something of the devotion Capt Lloyd Philipps had for his wife that her grave did not stay lonely long, because he followed her into it just nine days later, dying of influenza leading to heart failure. \par Curiously, the death certificates of both contain the same error, describing Captain Philipps's regiment as the 33rd Madras Infantry, not (as it correctly should be) the 36th. \par Was this perhaps an attempt to hide the family secret? If so, Lloyd Rice Philipps had long ago atoned for his moment of desperate madness, and we should remember him as surely he himself would wish to be remembered - as an officer, and above all else, a gentleman. \par CbD \par By Judith Lloyd.C/bD}